Ritu Jha-
At his first public appearance after landing in the United States, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi told an invite-only audience at the University of Santa Cruz’s Silicon Valley campus in Santa Clara, California that India is like an ocean facing a storm, and that this too shall pass. He was responding to specific question on what is often viewed as social engineering in the country, led by the governing BJP’s Hindutva principles.
“India is like a huge ocean,” Gandhi said. “And all oceans will have storms. When the storm comes, one way of looking at it is that this is a huge disaster, and it’s the end of the road. I think the correct way of looking at it is, India is facing a storm, and the storm is going to pass. Let us face the storm bravely and effectively. And let us make sure that when the storm passes, we have a new India, a forward-looking India, in place.”
Gandhi said that as a “political actor, I can see the government for what it is. It’s difficult for a lot of people to see them because of the media pressure, the money. But I can see, as a political entrepreneur, I can clearly see that there are huge vulnerabilities for the media.”
The Congress scion, who was recently debarred from Parliament after being convicted in a defamation case in Gujarat, spoke on varied subjects with the moderator Dr. Anjali Arondekar, Founding Co-Director of the Center for South Asian Studies, UC Santa Cruz. The theme of the event was “In Conversation with Rahul Gandhi: Toward Justice and Democratic Futures”. Gandhi said unemployment in India is now a crisis, “and it’s going out of control.” He said, “A huge part of that unemployment is because of the way the BJP regime is concentrating wealth and power. And they’re wiping out the backbone of the Indian small and medium businesses.”
He added that in India, “we do not respect skills.” He said he was on the opinion that if the unemployment problem needed to be nixed, then “We have to start respecting the person who is skilled. I’ll give a few examples. There are clusters all across India, which have tremendous amounts of skill. I was in the Bharat Jodo Yatra where I walked through Bellary (in Karnataka, southern India). Not many of you would know that it is the jeans capital of India. Most jeans made in India are made out of Bellary. Four lakh (400,000) people have become unemployed in Bellary over the last three or four years. Only 40,000 people are employed. Why? Because we are not focusing on capital and linking it with skills. There is a disconnect between where the skill cluster is and where our capital is going. One thing that we would think about is how we link capital flows to the clusters of skill in India. Our capital structure is completely agnostic. Making that connection is very important.”
Gandhi said that the country not only needs greater public expenditure in education and healthcare, but also a sea change in the way schools teach. “We don’t let our children question,” he said. “We make them memorize things. In a modern economy, you can’t do that. These are unfortunately deeply embedded in our culture. Questions of caste, questions of community. We have to challenge some of these ideas more aggressively, more centrally.”
He spoke extensively on the Bharat Jodo Yatra, which, some political observers say, was partly responsible for Congress’ landslide election victory in Karnataka earlier in May. He said that despite all hurdles and naysayers, he and his party pushed on with his march across India which gave him the opportunity to learn about people and their pressing problems.
He said, “Once we started working, and we decided we were going to walk right from Kanyakumari to Kashmir, the entire media was up in arms. Everybody was pushing against it, telling me that is a useless endeavor. But, no amount of force could shift this step. Wherever I walked through, I said, I don’t know where I will walk to, but I’ll go as far as I can,” Gandhi recounted.
On his “Mohabbat ki dukaan” statement that created a political storm, he explained: “Most people think love is a feeling. Love is not a
feeling, love is an action. Love is an action that generates a feeling. So if you act lovingly, the other person doesn’t have a chance.”
He asked the Indian diaspora to “express what India actually is, express what our philosophy is, what our history is because a lot of
the times what the BJP does, is that it completely distorts what India is. If you look at Indian history, look at Indian philosophy, we prize humility. Look at Buddha, Mahatma Gandhi, and Guru Nanak, the essence of what they were doing was Mohabbat, and humility. Where are Mohabbat and humility in the RSS? Expressing that love is the most important thing. I find it very powerful and a lot of fun, is don’t respond to their hatred with hatred. It frustrates them.”
He also asked the Indian diaspora to not respond to “their nastiness and their cruelty with cruelty and nastiness. You will never be able to defeat them. Every time they, you know, abuse you, say thank you very much, give me some more. I’m okay, I can take whatever you do. And we learn from it.”
When asked to comment on Kashmir, he said: “I did a lot of work in Kashmir, a lot of it in the background. During Panchayati Raj elections, helping Kashmiri youngsters get jobs. And the response that we were getting, and the affection, two-way affection that is being generated, has really surprised me. In 2014, it was just completely dismantled. We believe that everybody in India, regardless of whichever part of the society they come from, should have a voice and that they are respected, and appreciated. And I think that voice is an asset. That’s something not just for Kashmir, but for all parts of India. Our idea is that you let the voices be heard. Let’s have the conversation. It might be out-conversations, I might disagree with you on any text. You can tell me you don’t agree with me. I don’t agree with you. That doesn’t mean we should stop talking. That doesn’t mean that we can’t have a sharing of information.”
